Arrival Day

The Head Heeb has come up with an ethnic holiday for American Jews. As he explains,

349 years ago today, the ship St. Catherine landed at New Amsterdam carrying 23 Jewish settlers. They were not the first Jews to set foot on American soil — the merchant Solomon Franco had visited Boston in 1649 before returning to Holland — but unlike Franco, they came to stay. They were the founders of the six million strong Jewish community of the United States, and the day they landed — September 7 — is Arrival Day.

He is celebrating it today with a blogburst.

This is the first annual Arrival Day Blogburst. Arrival Day will be the first holiday of the American Jewish people rather than the Jewish religion — a celebration of the Jewish community and its contributions to the United States. As such, non-Jews as well as Jews are welcome to join in the celebration. In the wise words of Ikram Saeed, everyone is Jewish today, just as everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.

So, let’s be all Jewish today. Jonathan has links to all contributors to the blogburst. If you have a blog, go ahead and write something personal, historical or cultural and let Jonathan know.